Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Mulk Raj Anand was one of the most important realists and humanist novelists of India who worked against the trends and took Indian literature from the stories of fantasy and fairytales to the real-life struggles of individuals against the ills of society. The Old Woman and The Cow was his first and only novel with a female protagonist that was published in the year 1960. The subtitle of the novel is Gauri. This novel raises a strong voice against the ill-treatment of women in India but also explores through the example of Gauri what a woman in India should do for her emancipation. The Old Woman and The Cow is a story of a meek, gentle, obedient girl turning into an independent and confident modern woman.
Characters:
Gauri is the protagonist of the novel. She is a poor uneducated young orphan girl who lives with her uncle Amru and aunt Lakshmi in the village Piplan Kalan situated at the foothills of the Himalayas. Her father and mother died when she was very young and her uncle Amru believes that she is inauspicious to her family. Amru is a greedy man with no human emotions toward Gauri. Panchi is an independent peasant living in Chota Piplan where he owns an acre and a half of agricultural land. He too is an inauspicious orphan whose mother and father died just after his birth. He lives with Mola Ram, his uncle, and his wife Kesari, the Old Woman. Kesari is childless and is very fond of Panchi and doles out her love for Panchi in absence of Mola Ram. Damodar is a close friend of Panchi. Rakhi is an old midwife who helps pregnant women in the village. She is uneducated and tries to convince pregnant women of the village that they do not need doctors who are predominantly male. Seth Jai Ram Das is a 60 years old money lender of Hoshiarpur, the town near Piplan Kalan. He is a lecherous widower seeking a mistress to exploit. Dr. Mahindra is a young gentle doctor who runs a hospital in Hoshiarpur. Dr. Batra is a corrupt lecherous man who is the assistant of Dr. Mahindra.
Summary of The Old Woman and The Cow
The story is set in the superstitious and orthodox area of backward villages Piplan Kalan, and Chotta Piplan in the small town of Hoshiarpur.
Gauri is a 17-year-old poor, calm, decent, gentle, meek, and obedient girl who lives with her uncle Amru and Aunt Lakshmi in Piplan Kalan. Lakshmi likes Gauri and wishes to get married soon but she doesn’t have enough money for her dowry.
Amru is a greedy person who doesn’t wish to spend even a single penny on Gauri. On Lakshmi’s insistence, Amru tries to find a proper match for Gauri. Soon her marriage is arranged with Panchi a young independent farmer living in the nearby village of Chota Piplan. He too is an orphan like Gauri who lives with his uncle Mola Ram and aunt Kesari. Marriage happens traditionally. Panchi is a strong young man with a patriarchal attitude. He didn’t demand any dowry but as a wife, he desired “a girl whom he could fold in his arms at night and kick during the day, who would adorn his house and help him with the work on the land...” He owns agricultural land and a pair of bulls.
Gauri is too excited by her marriage as she feels that it will change her life. But soon her dream shatters as Panchi savagely uses her for his sexual needs on the very first night. On the next morning, Gauri faces Kesari who is jealous of her. Kesari is her mother-in-law, the aunt of Panchi who has a secret affection for Panchi and considers Gauri as her competitor. Kesari regularly chastises Gauri for every minute thing or mistake and Gauri is expected to remain obedient to her. Kesari’s abusive behavior continues to aggravate and she openly calls Gauri the whore from Piplan. Despite remaining submissive, meek, and obedient, Gauri realizes that none of her efforts help her and thinks, “If I speak; my mother is blamed for something: if I remain silent, my father is called a donkey.” One day, she decides to confront Kesari. Kesari complains to Panchi about her and he beats Gauri in front of Kesari. Gauri feels too humiliated.
Later on, at night during their love-making, Gauri taking advantage of the situation pleads to Panchi not to beat her again at Kesari’s bidding. Even at that passionate moment, he does not hesitate to remind her of his conventional right to beat her: “But the husband has to chastise the wife if she goes wrong.” Things don’t go well on the farm too. The area suffers a famine and Panchi’s bulls fall prey to an illness. Kesari uses this ill fortune to her advantage and blames Gauri for being inauspicious. She attributes the illness of the bullocks and the failure of rain to Garui‟s bad luck. Panchi generally used to resist superstitions and often ridiculed Kesari for her superstitious talks but the toughness of time starts affecting him and he starts believing that the ill-fated Gauri is affecting his fortune. At the same time, Gauri gets pregnant. This further fills Kesari with jealousy as she is childless. The situations at home become so poisonous that Mola Ram decides to create a partition between the home and tells Panchi to live with his wife in his part of the house. Yet, Kesari continues abusing Gauri and poisoning Panchi’s mind against her.
As famine continues Panchi finds that he has no money to buy seeds for the farm and grains for home. In such a dire situation Gauri takes the golden earrings out and gives them to Panchi to sell them and buy seeds. Panchi’s friend Damodar is a superstitious man. He tells him to show the horoscope of Gauri to some expert. He says that they never faced such dire days before Panchi’s marriage to Gauri. Gradually, Panchi also starts believing that Gauri brought ill fate to him. He humiliates Gauri and abuses her and orders her to go away from his house.
Helpless, Gauri decides to return to her uncle and aunt’s home. Lakshmi is worried about her but Amru is an inconsiderate, unprincipled exploiter. He abuses Gauri and says that she first became the cause of her parent’s death and now she ruined her husband’s home. He pushes the idea of the remarriage of Gauri to Lakshmi though her husband is alive and she isn’t even divorced. He mentions the loan they have to pay and says that Seth Jai Ram Das, the money lender will snatch their house if they fail to pay his loan with interest in time. Lakshmi realizes the trick of Amru but fails to stop him. Gauri strongly opposes any such talk of her remarriage. Amru then tells her to go to Seth Jai Ram Das’s house in Hoshiarpur and work as a housemaid to earn some money. However, Amru and Lakshmi sell her to Jai Ram Das without her knowledge. Jai Ram Das is a widower who is seeking a mistress to exploit. When Gauri reaches his home, he cajoles her to live with him as his wife but Gauri strongly rebuts his lecherous motives. Exasperated, he imprisons Gauri in a room of his house which is near a hospital run by Dr. Mahindra. Dr. Mahindra notices some ill going around his hospital and rescues Gauri while strongly rebuking Jai Ram Das who accepts his fault and let Gauri go with Dr. Mahindra.
Dr. Mahindra takes her to his hospital where she starts living and learning skills as a nurse to tender the patients at the hospital. Gauri is a young beautiful woman with a full-grown body. She is in the early stage of her pregnancy and looks attractively beautiful. One day, Dr. Batra an assistant doctor at the hospital finds her alone in a dormitory and fails to control his lust. He attempts to rape Gauri which Gauri resists with all her might. During her struggle, she suffers a miscarriage but is saved by the patients of the hospital who come to her rescue. Dr. Mahindra then arranges for her return to Chotta Piplan, back to her husband.
At Chotta Piplan, Panchi misses Gauri and feels that he loves her. Unaware of her ordeal, he is preparing to bring her back from her uncle’s home. When Panchi sees her back, he embraces her. He is sad about the miscarriage but doesn’t know about the rape attempt that Gauri faced. When Kesari sees Gauri, she decides to go to Panchi’s side of the home again to intervene but Panchi strictly stops her and tells her not to intervene in his family matter. Gauri is too happy seeing this change in Panchi. Kesari on the other hand feels humiliated and frustrated. She decides to spread rumors against Gauri in the village and tells people that the whore from Piplan has returned to ruin the village. She tells the neighboring women how Gauri lived with a Seth in Hoshiarpur and then spend some days at a hospital with doctors before returning to the village. Panchi listens to all these rumors but ignores them. However, he gets disturbed within his heart and feels the confusion. When he meets Damodar, he too mentions the rumors to him. He asks if Panchi is sure that Gauri is chaste and loyal to him. Panchi remains silent. Meanwhile, Kesari sends the old midwife Rakhi to Panchi’s house to check how Gauri suffered a miscarriage. Her only motive is to fan the rumors against Gauri more and instigate Panchi. When Rakhi visits Panchi’s house, Gauri doesn’t allow her to check in as she already had been checked and treated at the hospital by doctor Mahindra. Rakhi feels offended and he tells Panchi that his wife doesn’t want her to touch her body as her body has been touched by male doctors in the town. This fills Panchi with anger towards Gauri. He confronts Gauri and asks, “Tell me the truth, bitch…. What is the proof of your purity”? Gauri couldn’t offer any proof so she answers that she has always been true to him. Panchi isn’t willing to trust her anymore and says, “you have cut my nose, bitch from Piplan Kalan, what curse upon my fate prospered in my marriage with you, daughter of a whore!”
Gauri is not the meek, weak, silent, subservient cow anymore. She has seen so much in her life, she was sold by her own uncle and aunt, and then she faced a rape attempt at her during which she lost her child in the womb. And she has seen that if it is bad, there is good too in the world. She decides not to take anymore. When Panchi abuses her dead mother, she decides it's enough and says, “If I am a curse on you, I will go away. And if you strike me again, I will hit you back.” She then leaves Panchi’s house and goes back to Doctor Mahindra’s hospital to learn the skills of a nurse and earn her own living. Anand ends the story with the message that education and employment can only help a woman claim her individuality.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of Indian English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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